Jane Friedman Resigns as President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide

Jane Friedman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, today announced she is stepping down after 10 years at the helm of one of the world’s largest English-language publishers. "My 10 years at HarperCollins have been far and away the most rewarding of my career and so it was not easy to make the decision to step down,” commented Ms. Friedman. "It has been a great privilege to develop and lead the best and brightest team in the world of publishing as we created and implemented innovative programs which placed HarperCollins at the forefront of the 21st Century publishing world. We have expanded opportunities for our authors to connect with our readers across many different mediums, while also encouraging a new generation to get excited about reading. "During the past decade, we have enjoyed tremendous success while expanding our brand on-line and around the world. Our accomplishments include: more than doubling the company’s profits over the past ten years; launching the Publishing+ program that has made HarperCollins an industry leader in the world of digital publishing; our authors whose excellence was recently recognized with the awarding of two Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature in recent months; a company record 25 books on the New York Times best-seller list just last week; and expansion to new markets around the world including India and China. "I am extremely pleased to be succeeded by Brian Murray, an incredibly talented individual and executive, and a true lover of books, who is the perfect person to lead our team to continued success in the future. I wish Brian and the entire team at HarperCollins the best of luck.” "Jane has been a terrific leader who succeeded in attracting some of the world’s most brilliant authors while, at the same time, delivering record breaking profits,” Said Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation. "We are enormously grateful for her contributions over the past 10 years and understand her desire to seek new challenges at this point in her career. I have enjoyed working with her immensely and will miss her. We wish her much success.” Ms. Friedman joined HarperCollins in November 1997, overseeing HarperCollins worldwide book publishing including operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and India. Under her leadership, the company achieved record revenues as well as countless publishing honors. Previously, she was Executive Vice President of Random House, Inc., Executive Vice President of the Knopf Publishing Group, Publisher of Vintage Books and Founder and President of Random House Audio Publishing. Ms. Friedman is Vice-Chair of the Entertainment, Media and Communications Division of the UJA. She serves on the board of the Association of American Publishers, Literacy Partners, Yale University Press, and Poets & Writers, Inc. She is also a member of the American Advisory Committee of the Jerusalem International Book Fair, the Advisory Committee to the MFA program in creative writing at The New School and The Committee of 200. About HarperCollins Publishers HarperCollins, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world, is a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing groups around the world including the HarperCollins General Books Group, HarperCollins Children’s Books Group, Zondervan, HarperCollins UK, HarperCollins Canada, HarperCollins Australia/New Zealand and HarperCollins India. HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children's books, cookbooks, mystery, romance, reference, religious and spiritual books. With nearly 200 years of history HarperCollins has published some of the world’s foremost authors and has won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott. Consistently at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement HarperCollins is the first publisher to digitize its content and create a global digital warehouse to protect the rights of its authors, meet consumer demand and generate additional business opportunities. You can visit HarperCollins Publishers on the Internet at http://www.harpercollins.com.